So I was killing time on Tropes late last night, particularly on WMG for Pixar. And then I just randomly started expanding on the biggest WMG theory to include everything I could think of, including movies and shorts:

All Pixar movies and shorts exist within the same universe, and this universe is defined by the fact that almost everything in it is anthropomorphic and/or sentient. This includes people, animals, inanimate objects, even natural aspects.

- The Pixar universe is a few steps ahead of "normal" Earth technologically, but is not super-advanced.- A thinking-with-portals force (maybe call it portaltech) exists as the closest thing to magic in the Pixar universe, but is difficult to harness and is not widely used or even known about. Portaltech allows for time and space to be tweaked a bit. - Most animals and inanimate objects, while anthropomorphic and sentient, know better than to reveal themselves as such to humans. This is because humans are most adept at providing them with their own needs (obviously inanimate objects/toys/etc. are dependent upon humans, and many animals are, too), and it is simply easier and safer to rely on humans while presenting themselves as "normal." Only on rare occasions will objects or animals reveal themselves to humans as aware and sentient.

A timeline for when everything takes place works like this:

- One Man Band is sometime around the turn of the century or earlier. - Presto takes place in the 40s. Alec's hat possesses some degree of portaltech, which then Presto uses in his magic show. - Up takes place from around the 40s to our current time. Charles Muntz uses developing tech from big-city places (later used to create some tech in the Incredibles) to create his own inventions. He suspects sentience in animals, hence him developing the dog collars that enable his dogs to speak human languages. - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B? A kid's show that airs around this time! - The Incredibles takes place from about the 50s through the 70s. During that time, a lot of fancy tech is developed (robotics, memory-wiping devices) but is not available to the general public. Shorts such as Red's Dream and Boundin' take place around now, too.- Ratatouille also takes place a little before current times, possibly the 70s-80s. It proves another instance of animals revealing their awareness to humans. - Toy Story 1-3, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, Luxo Jr., Tin Toy, Knick Knack, Geri's Game, Partly Cloudy, For the Birds and Lifted all take place around our current time. This explains why we see Toy Story toys in places like the dentist's office in Finding Nemo or in the girl's room in Up. The monsterverse exists in a parallel dimension to Pixar's "normal" Earth, and uses portaltech in their doors to access the bedrooms of Earth's children. Buy N' Large starts to develop as a company. - In the future, Buy N' Large eventually takes over everything, and rampant consumerism starts to take over the earth. Most things are manufactured by robotics. Superpowers are "bred out" of the human race since they are a submissive trait, and everything being handled with robotics causes less of a need for superpowers. Eventually, things get bad enough for all humans to leave earth. The monster dimension either follows suit with consumerism, or else switches their doors over to a new profitable dimension...perhaps collecting the screams/laughs of Lifted's alien children. - In the absence of humans, Cars takes place a century or so after all humans leave and animals are next to nonexistent. Whatever Buy-N-Large robots are still functioning can manufacture the cars, and they take over as the dominant sentient beings on the planet. Since cars were before so heavily dependent on humans for their identity, they take on human identities themselves and try to closely imitate human culture and history, particularly human civilization at its "peak" (around the 20th-21st century). For awhile, they are successful, and cars enjoy a run as the dominant species on the planet for a couple hundred years. Eventually, though, Buy-N-Large robots all stop functioning and fossil fuels run dry. The cars civilization then also dies out. - And finally, many centuries into the future, Wall-E takes place! By the end of it, humans return to earth and start human (and animal, plant, and inanimate) civilization over again. - And all of this universe takes place within the confines of Day and Night, making the universe itself anthropomorphic/sentient.

SO YEAH. There is really no point to this other than I'm a colossal nerd and it's fun. I suppose now I should actually go get that cleaning done.

Oh I love the discussions about how everything in the Pixar universe is connected!

Ratatouille's timing is a little hard to place, because of the transportation (like Colette's motorcycle and the health-inspector's car). But 70s/80s could work. Lifted fits around this time because Linguini(hell, looks like him) is the one abducted by the aliens in the short. Works with Area 51 in the early 70s.

As for Cars, I like the theory that Cars is nothing but a movie/tv series in the Pixar world. It can be supported by the fact that a kid in TS3 wears a Cars shirt and there's a Cars wooden toy in the movie as well. There's the notion that The Incredibles is also a movie/comic book series. But superpowers being a submissive trait is a good call. Considering Syndrome wiped out a good amount of them...

Oh and Day & Night is current times/where UP is up-to-speed because the lumberjack in that is the construction worker in the beginning.

Yeah, with Ratatouille it seemed like it was taking place a little before current-day, but not now (what with the look of the TVs and transportation.) OH YEAH, I totally forgot that the guy in Lifted looks like Linguini! And aliens around that time period would work better with Roswell. XD

Cars is probably the toughest one to fit in, just because it is the most different from all the others, but a movie/TV series could definitely work (and kind of mirror the way Cars merchandise is so prevalent in the world, too. XD)

Yeah, what with Syndrome killing off most of the supers, and then culture/technology/legislation changing so that there becomes no "ecological" need for super powers, it could work that supers used to exist more towards the first half of the century and then eventually just weren't found anymore.